Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Church Plant Coaching

"The single most effective evangelistic methodology under heaven is planting new churches." -Peter Wagner

"Churches worth their salt aren't parasites on existing churches. They reach believers who dropped out of church years ago. They reach people who don't really know the Lord. They reach children who have never gone to Sunday school in their lives. They reach the lost." -Dr. Ralph Winter


Our number one reason for coming to Atlanta is to plant a church. We are so excited about the opportunities before us. We have a great opportunity to 'spy' out the land like we never had before.

One of the persons I had the opportunity to meet and eventually will get to know really well is my church plant coach, David Houtsma. He is the lead pastor at Northside Family Church in Alpharetta, Georgia. We had a long meeting last Friday discussing goals, visions, and struggles in church plant.

Repeatedly church planters complain of the isolation of being on the field all alone. Research indicates that there is a noticeable attendance increase among church planters meeting with mentors. In year one, the gap is 12%. In year two, that gap is 16%. Year three is 13%. Finally, year four evidences a 25% gap. Supervision has similar positive results. Churches led by church planters involved in weekly supervision meetings lead churches that are substantially larger than those who are not. Similar to mentoring, a weekly supervision meeting makes it the best stewardship. Supervision does matter, but meeting weekly makes more of a difference. Meeting with a supervisor may indicate a heavy involvement by the sponsoring entity—the planter would probably have a close relationship with the supervisor.

To partner with the vision, coaching has come to our church plant - Paramount Church - a successful and strong ministry!